


A Hunter Looks at Fifty

by were_lemur



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean's Birthday, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-09 05:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13474458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/were_lemur/pseuds/were_lemur
Summary: There's nothing like a birthday -- especially the ones that end in a zero -- to make you think about your life.





	A Hunter Looks at Fifty

January 24, 2029 dawns icy cold. The heater in the Bunker is on full-blast, and while it's not enough to completely take the chill out of the larger spaces like the library, the bedrooms are nice and toasty.

This is a good thing. It means that Dean's bad shoulder grumbles instead of screaming. He's not sure when he started keeping ibuprofen and a glass of water on his bedside table, but the first thing he does when he wakes is to swallow the pills.

He flops on his back and stares up at the ceiling. Since he's lying here anyway, he considers beating off, but he's going out tonight. While he hasn't run into any performance issues yet, he'd rather not jinx his birthday sex.

"Getting old ain't for sissies." 

Fifteen minutes later, the ibuprofen are starting to kick in and the pressure in his bladder is getting uncomfortable. So he pulls on his robe and grabs some fresh clothes and shuffles to the bathroom.

A shower and a shave later, and he's ready to face the day. He walks into the kitchen to find Sam there, poking at a pan on the stove.

"Happy birthday. Coffee's ready. I was going to cook you breakfast, but -- " He glares down at the pan again.

"Move over, little brother. Let the expert take charge." The bacon is salvageable, but the eggs are a total loss. "You think you can manage not to burn the toast?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "Yeah, Dean." But his smile takes the edge off.

By the time the bacon and eggs are ready, Sam is finished not-burning and buttering the toast. They eat their breakfast in companionable silence. Then Sam raises his mug. "To the big 5-0."

Dean taps his mug against Sam's, then takes a gulp of coffee.

"So how does it feel?"

"Weird." He takes another swallow of coffee. Stares down at it for a moment before speaking. "Time was, I didn't think I'd make it to twenty-five. Then I _knew_ I wasn't gonna see thirty."

"Yeah," Sam says, quiet.

"But here I am." He smiles. "Here we both are." Then he raises his mug again. "To beating the odds."

"I'll definitely drink to that," Sam says.

They sit in silence for another moment. Which starts to stretch. And Dean has no intention of letting his birthday turn into a discussion of all the ways he could've not been here.

"So. Before we turn this into a chick flick moment. What'd you get me?"

"Hold on a moment." Sam walks out, comes back with a big box wrapped in paper that proclaims the recipient to be "Over the Hill."

Dean rips the paper open eagerly -- only to find a box of Depends. "Sam. You shouldn't have."

As hard as Sam is laughing, he still manages to take a picture. Dean flips Sam off, and that, too, is captured for posterity.

"Well? Aren't you going to open it?"

Now he realizes, it's heavier than he assumes adult diapers should have been. He slits the box open, and there are more presents inside, all wrapped in the same obnoxious paper.

A bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. A twelve-pack of Thighslapper Ale, all the bottles inside the case individually wrapped, because Sam never does anything by halves. The latest release from Casa Erotica. A gift card for the local auto parts store. And ... "An inflatable sheep?"

"Since you're getting older, I thought you might need an alternate form of companionship."

"Haven't had a problem yet," he says, and grins. "I have it on good authority that a little gray at the temples makes me look distinguished."

"Good authority?"

"Remember the librarian who helped us track down the history on that poltergeist in Providence last month?"

"She seemed nice," Sam says. "I'm sure she wouldn't have come right out and called you 'decrepit'?"

"Actually, it seemed to be code for 'older guy I wanna bang'."

"You didn't."

"I did." He grins. " _We_ did."

"Just spare me the details."

"Forty-five years old and still a prude. Sad."

Sam rolls his eyes. Dean starts to clean up, but Sam takes the dirty dishes from him and scrubs them.

"I've been thinking," Sam says, as he puts the last of the dishes away.

"Don't hurt yourself."

"I'm serious, Dean. Things are probably as under-control as they've ever been."

"Just because Heaven and Hell are on time-out for the next milennium don't mean that everybody else's gonna play nice."

"I know, but angels and demons were the two major players. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves; any hunter worth their salt knows how to handle them."

Dean has to chuckle at that. Sam lets out a long-suffering sigh.

"This generation of hunters is better-trained and better connected than they've ever been. There are no apocalypse-level threats on the horizon -- "

"Don't jinx it," Dean says. "And no, I'm not ready to retire and play bingo in Florida."

"I'm not talking about retirement. Just, you know, taking a step back, into a more advisory role. Like Bobby did."

"Bobby was still hunting when he was in his sixties."

"Yeah, and it got him killed."

"Wasn't because he was old. Any teen-ager can catch a bullet."

"Right, but we can't keep beating the odds forever."

"I'm not talking about forever. And what if something ugly does rear its head, a year or two of five from now. Wouldn't you rather stay sharp than try to get back into hunting shape in the middle of a crisis?"

"You can't live your life on the basis that there might be another apocalypse at any moment, Dean!"

"What do you think I've been doing for the past twenty years?" He shoves his hands into his pockets because that'll give him at least a moment to stop before he takes a swing at Sam. It's his birthday and he doesn't want to spend it fighting with his brother. "You know what, I'm gonna -- I'm going out for a drive."

There was a time when Sam would have yelled at him for a move like that, but at least one of them's learned something over the years.

The Imapa sits in the garage, still covered with road dust from their ghost-town ghost hunt in Arizona. She deserves better than that. He gets out the bucket and sponge and starts soaping her up. The rhythm soothes him.

Since he's already washed her, he decides he might as well wax her, too.

He finds himself humming "Nothing Else Matters" as he works, the anger drained away. By the time he's buffing his Baby to a mirror shine, he's calm. Centered.

Years of self-loathing have made him good at not looking at himself in the mirror. He can focus his attention on shaving his face or running the clippers through his hair without meeting his own eyes. But now, he lets himself look. His hair's going gray, crows' feet carving deeper, and new wrinkles are spreading.

He's not an old man yet, but he's getting there.

In just a couple more years, he'll be older than his father ever got to be.

"Getting morbid in my old age," he muttered, and gets back to polishing. But thinking about his dad led him to thinking about his mom, and how she'd never wanted this for him.

"You can't always get what you want," he sang, and his echoes sounded pretty good. "You can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes you just might find -- " and he stopped, because maybe the song was right.

And then he heard Sam's voice. "You get what you need."

Dean buffed the last of the wax from Baby's trunk, and then turned to face his brother.

"Dean, look. I'm sorry for pushing the subject earlier."

"Don't be. Neither one of us is getting any younger." He wants to make a joke, wants to do anything but stand here and talk about his feelings, but his life's been one long string of doing things he didn't want to so you'd think he was used to it by now. "It ain't a secret that hunting's my life. That I wouldn't know what to do with myself without it. I don't know what I'd _be_ if I decided to hang up my shotgun."

Sam stays silent, watching him with those puppy-dog eyes of his.

"I'm not ready to stop. I don't know if I ever will be, until -- " _until you put me on the pyre,_ he almost says, and the unspoken words nearly choke him, swing around, and punch him in the gut as, deep down, he gets where Sammy's coming from.

He knows what he has to do. He wishes he had a beer, so he could delay this by taking a swig.

"I'm not ready to stop, but maybe we can slow down. Just a little. You know, let the younger generation get a little more practice."

"That sounds good," Sam says, and lets out a laugh that sounds shaky, as if he was expecting a fight.

"Yeah. Awesome." Dean forces himself to smile. "So, what do you say we catch a movie? My kind of movie. Nothing with subtitles or mimes." He shudders.

"You don't seem to mind subtitles in your cartoon porn," Sam says, slipping them back into the normal back-and-forth.

"You do realize I'm not watching for the story, right Sammy?"

He slips behind the wheel of the Impala, and Sam drops into the seat beside him. "I really didn't need that mental image.

Dean is still laughing as they pull out onto the open road.


End file.
